Founded in 1988, Holt Systems, Inc. (HSI) is a privately held corporation headquartered in Pompano Beach, Florida, with a second location in Delray Beach. The company develops and markets enterprise software for document and workflow management aimed at the healthcare and financial industries, and also offers systems integration, application development, document storage and retrieval, and business process re-engineering. It markets its products under the emedRec and itemsFlow brand names and holds strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Nuance NaturallySpeaking and Oracle.

Holt Systems supplies Electronic Health Records (EHR) software to end users such as ambulatory practices, ambulatory surgical centers and diagnostic centers. For years, physicians and hospitals favored on-site, client-server systems for EHR. That preference shifted as practices upgraded and integrated EHR with practice management tools, drawn by lower upfront costs, flexible outsourcing options and ease of use, and by the substantial government incentives available to practices using cloud-based EHR.

Holt Systems followed its customers. The company moved end users from client-server products to Software-as-a-Service versions, adopted a subscription-based model and redesigned its software to perform regardless of location. President Brendon A. Holt described uptime as the number one concern for any facility hosting the application, because any downtime would bring the practices Holt serves down with it and disrupt their workflows.

That set a hard requirement: a hosting provider guaranteeing 24/7/365 continuous systems performance, with the experience and certifications needed to operate in the healthcare sector. With those criteria in mind, the management team began its search for a colocation company.

Holt Systems evaluated six colocation providers across Southeastern Florida and contacted other EHR company chief executives during the process before selecting Volico. Brendon Holt cited two underlying reasons for the choice: the technical expertise of the staff and the advanced technology offered by Volico's Deerfield facility.

Volico provided colocation covering rack space, power and bandwidth as the hosting foundation for the cloud-based version of Holt's software. Volico describes its facilities as HIPAA, SSAE16, SOC Type II and NIST compliant, which addressed the certification requirement that comes with operating in healthcare. Its data centers are built to be category 5 hurricane resistant, with gas-based inert fire suppression, 2N+X Smart-Grid redundant power infrastructure and 2N+X Smart-Grid redundant cooling infrastructure, the redundancy behind a continuous uptime commitment.

The transition to Volico went smoothly and without undue interruptions. Holt attributed that to the technical staff at Volico, saying they had gone well beyond the scope of their work to assist and had been helpful throughout the process.

After the move, Holt Systems outsourced resolution of its network issues to the staff at Volico, with proactive technical support and access to current technologies replacing work its own team had carried. Volico also provides reliable, expandable hosting at a reasonable price and protection against hurricane damage.

• Over 30 medical practices now function out of the Holt Systems hosted environment
• Holt Systems services more than 100 doctors in multiple practices throughout the US
• Holt Systems reports a 200-250% increase in company revenues
• Switch from one-time purchase to monthly subscription delivered significantly higher ROI for emedRec
• Practices became eligible for EHR Stage 2 Meaningful Use, delivering over $3M in stimulus revenue
• Outsourcing network issue resolution to Volico optimized Holt Systems operating costs